Still Life
The general leans
his cheek against the general’s wife’s
a caress begun in
1908
stares furiously
at the dusty palms and spider’s web’s portières
a drop stands
motionless in the wind while the house rises measuredly skywards
and black snails
invade the garden room
with large white
astonished eye they hesitate at first on the threshold
then transform
themselves into tears
that roll across
the floor in gleaming trails
the night is an
ear that yawns itself out of joint
a gurgling in
hidden pipes
the one-eyed owl
sighs deeply from its perch on the sideboard
under the
chaiselongue the moon
catches a ball of
combed-off hair a greying fledgling
a matchless kelim
(Pirot 1840) arches its back and squeaks like a rat
while the
mosquitoes whisper hoarsely about Walt Whitman’s private life
now the ache has
found its tooth and the bullet its stiffened chest
the general his
life’s his death’s proud Atlantis
it is
accomplished
the Cossack
Oedipus on his stallion on the plain on the wall
has found his
grave the limitation (the fine balance)
only the table
linen is still waiting for its rightful apparation
only time its
scissors only the eye its gleam only the stones are a strong redeemer
oblivion has
forgotten these images and thunder always drifts over
the tongue of
daybreak steals off a different way
the garden’s
marble doves have perched on the retina
the wrought-iron
spears deep in this flesh
Meissen will
always be Meissen and the soul immortal
(how long
immortality
how long this
blind bitter open lens this tower that falls down
so great a
loneliness how long)
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